bountiful favours: and though thou mightest make us know the worth of slighted mercies, by the want of them, and deprive us of all the good which we have so greatly abused, yet, O how do the promises of thy word, and the frequent experience which we have had of thy mercy, encourage us still with hope to look unto our God, and to wait for the salvation of the Lord! O how long (in all our provocations) hast thou spared us! And how often (in our distresses) sent a wonderful redemption to us! To thee who hast helped and delivered; we still look for help and deliverance. O our God! arise and help us, and deliver us, for thy mercy's sake; for the sake of that mercy which first made us thy people, and still has owned us for thy peculiar care. O do not abhor us, nor forsake us, for thy name's sake; but be jealous for thy land, and pity thy people. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.

But, O our God, if thou dost not see fit to turn away the evils from us, prepare us for them, and support us under them, and bring us out of them purified as gold! Let us not sink and perish in our calamities, but receive spiritual good from temporal evils; and find the light momentary afflictions to work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. And though thou shouldest feed us with bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet let not our teachers be removed into corners: bring us not under a famine of the word; nor give

us over to the formality of a lifeless profession; but whilst thou continuest to us the means of grace, O continue thy blessing upon them, and send not leanness withal into our souls. Though thou permit the floods and storms to arise; yet fortify us so by thy grace, that we may not be moved by any of the afflictions; nor turn the advantage of suffering for thee, into an occasion of falling from thee.

Seeing the truth itself will not make us free if we are not true to it; nor the purest religion be our defence if we continue to walk unworthy of our profession; O help us, Lord, to rid our hands and our hearts of all the accursed things, that provoke thy wrath and indignation against us. Let us wisely consider of thy doings, and know the time of our visitation: give us grace that we may hearken to thy calls, and take thy warnings, and improve thy mercies, while we have them; let us now follow the conduct of thy good providence, and comply with all the gracious methods which thou art using to reclaim us, that we may be delivered from the evil to come, and be for ever happy in thy presence. Hear, Lord, and answer us, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

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Confession and Prayer for the Evening of a Public Fast-Day.

O LORD most high and holy, the God of all power and glory, against whom we have greatly sinned, and who by our sins hast been highly provoked; we are under a necessity still to come and appear before thee; nor dare we keep away from thee. But O! with what confidence can we look up to the Majesty of heaven, whom we have so much offended?

Well may we be abashed and struck down, to bethink ourselves of all the evil that we have done, and all the sins of heart and life which we still commit; when we remember, O Lord, and consider thy perfect understanding of every particular, thy holiness to hate, thy justice to requite, and thy power to punish, every wicked thing, we are even confounded before thee.

We fall down, and humble ourselves at thy foot-stool, O blessed and glorious God, confessing the grievous guilt of all our sins, and our just desert of thy heavy judgments. For we cannot but own ourselves to be some of those degenerate children whom thou hast nourished and brought up, and that have rebelled against thee. Yea, the very forbearance which thou hast exercised, has emboldened us to sin the more against thee.

Holy Father! we are filled with confusion, to think how inconsistent we have been with ourselves; we call ourselves children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of glory; we profess to

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take the gospel as our rule, and to believe all the great eternal things contained in it; and yet we walk, as if we did not know the privileges that we enjoy, or regard the relations in which we stand alas! how unsuitable is this conduct to our profession!

Surely this may not only fill our faces with shame, but our hearts with dread; lest our very profession of thy holy religion should rise up in judgment against us, to aggravate our condem

nation.

We have been vain and carnal, proud and unthankful in our health and prosperity; and sullen and froward, murmuring and desponding in seasons of adversity. The kindness that should have allured us unto thee, and encourage us the more faithfully and cheerfully to serve thee, has caused us rather to be forgetful of thee, and to wax wanton against thee. thee. And the correction that should have driven us out of our sins, and hastened us to flee for the life of our souls, has but put us out of patience and filled us with prejudice against thy righteous hand, and with hard and unworthy thoughts of our God. In this manner we have held fast our sins, notwithstanding all thy various methods to alienate us from them.

Yea, to thee, O Lord, who searchest the heart, and triest the reins, we must acknowledge and bewail the sins of our hearts and minds; our vain thoughts and proud imaginations, our impure and covetous desires, our envious and malicious projects. These have corrupted the

fountain, and defiled the habitation of thy blessed Spirit. These are the seeds and roots of all the other evils in our lives; and render us even as criminal in thy sight, as if we had outwardly acted what we have thus inwardly devised. These vile inclinations, this proneness to evil, (this approving of it, consenting to it, delighting in it) carries so much guilt and malignity along with it, that even for this, thou mightest justly abhor us, and condemn us in that day when thou shalt judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.

Thus we must criminate and arraign ourselves before thee; confessing that iniquities prevail against us, and that our sins still retain in great measure the ascendant over us! Still we are offending our holy Lord; and still we carry in us the corrupt nature, the carnal mind, which are at enmity against God, and which justly expose us to thy heaviest displeasure.

We read of such as cannot cease from sin; and such, O Lord, thou knowest us in a great measure to be; that have brought ourselves under the sad necessity of sinning against thee; and so entangled our guilty souls in the tempter's snare, as to be taken captive by him, even at his will.

We call to mind with shame and remorse, how we have provoked thee to jealousy, and affronted thy glorious Majesty, by the frequency of our sins, and the heinousness of our offences. But though we are constrained to acknowledge what great and provoking sinners

we